by Sara Craven
'Then you'll have to make some arrangements to get there,' Antonia said coolly. 'I made no extravagant promises to visit Heatonbank, and I've no intention of acting as your chauffeur. You take far too much for granted, Rowan.'
Rowan looked at her bleakly. 'Is that your final word?'
'I'm afraid so. If you want to be the Good Samaritan, it will have to be under your own steam.' Antonia's tone revealed her profound lack of interest in the subject under discussion, and Rowan turned silently and left the room.
In spite of everything, she had never dreamed that Antonia would refuse to give up whatever her evening's entertainment was for once. And the most galling thing was that she could drive the car herself if only she had the spare set of" keys. Carne wasn't around to see her and question the legality of what she was doing. And Sybilla would be expecting her. Sister had asked rather pointedly on the phone the previous evening when Rowan would be coming, and she had assured her she would be along next day. It seemed she would have to spend some of her hard earned wages on taxi fares, which would deplete the amount she would be able to save.
It was a grey morning, the air full of fine mist-like drizzle, and customers at the pottery were few and far between. Rowan was brewing coffee when David appeared.
'You look rather blue,' he greeted her. 'Having second thoughts about our date?'
'Oh-no.' Rowan realised with compunction that she had scarcely given it a second thought since the arrangement had been made. 'I just have a slight problem, that's all. I need to get to Heatonbank Clinic this evening to visit Sybilla-and I assumed my stepmother would take me, only she can't and-and now I'm a bit stuck.'
'I see.' David chewed his lip thoughtfully. 'Does it have to be tonight? I mean, Dad and Mum are going to see her some time--I heard them say so. Perhaps they could make it tonight.'
'No, please,' Rowan broke in quickly. 'It's my own fault. I should have checked with Antonia that she was available before making the arrangement. I don't want to cause your parents any trouble.'
'Don't talk so daft.' He looked and sounded surprised. 'You got them out of a jam, didn't you? They'd be pleased to help.'
He vanished into the workroom before Rowan could say any more, and after a few moments Grace arrived, looking severe.
'When you need help, you ask. That's what friends are for, young woman,' she said forthrightly.
'But it was all my own fault,' Rowan began, and Grace gave her an odd glance.
'Was it? I'd have thought Mrs Winslow could have spared one of her crowded hours to run you there and back, but I'm just poking my nose into what doesn't concern me,' she added cheerfully. 'So we'll pick you up this evening about half past six, and if Sybilla needs anything, you can pop into Keswick tomorrow with Clive and get it for her. And any time you want to go to Heatonbank just let us know and one of us will drive you. If Clive and I are too busy, I daresay David can be prevailed upon,' she added, grinning. 'I hear you're going to the disco with him next week.'
‘Yes.' Rowan's eyes searched her face. 'You-you don't mind?'
'Why should I?' Grace gave her an amused look. 'If I thought either of you were thinking in terms of a serious relationship, then I should mind, but I know David isn't, and you . . .' she stopped suddenly, a curiously embarrassed expression crossing her face. 'Here I go again,' she muttered after a pause.
Rowan's face grew hot. There was no point in pretending she did not understand, in asking Grace what she meant. Grace was shrewd and she had looked at Rowan long and hard when she had returned after that brief drive to the lakeside with Carne.
She said with an effort, 'It's all right. I know I've made a fool of myself, and I don't mind you knowing it either. That's what friends are for as well.'
Grace's face cleared. She said warmly, 'Rowan, I won't pretend I haven't been worried. I love Carne dearly, but . . .' She hesitated, then said in a little rush, 'But if you're looking for a father figure, then he won't do, and at your age that's all it can be. You could be hurt very badly. And as for Carne--well, you're a lovely child in your own self contained way, and he wouldn't be human if he wasn't tempted.' She smiled at Rowan. 'You don't believe me, but it's true. You have beautiful bones and a kind of-fey quality. I'd have thought the artist in him would have found it irresistible.'
Rowan thought, 'He saw me as a dryad with mountain ash berries in my hair.'
Aloud she said expressionlessly, 'He's going to paint Antonia.'
'Well, that figures.' Grace gave a little sigh. 'He's known her for a long time, after all. And he's been around. Perhaps he's ready for a relationship where there'll be no illusions to shatter.' There was a little silence, then she said briskly, 'Now, perhaps we'd better have that coffee while it's still fit to drink.'
Rowan carried hers back to the showroom. It was kind of Grace to be worried about her and to voice her concern. Tactful too to call her 'self-contained' when she knew ruefully she was transparent as glass. But no longer, she thought. All that was going to change, and by the time this summer was ended she would have her own facade to hide behind, her own wall around her emotions to shelter her while she licked her emotional wounds.
Perhaps one day she would even be as cynical as Carne, settling for the known, the predictable even if not particularly admirable, because where there were no illusions there could be no hurt, not any more.
She thought of Carne as he must have been when he was young, before the scar on his face, before the private inner scars which no one could see. He'd loved Antonia then, wanted her passionately. Now the wheel had turned, and she was going to be his, even though neither of them were the same people. He had opted for the life of a wealthy vagabond, jet-setting from one commission to the next, taking his pleasures as he found them, while Antonia had settled for marriage to a rich widower, and what had seemed at the time to be comfortable inertia, and probably that was what she intended to settle for the second time around as well, and Carne would' continue in his own way too, and if that was what they wanted, she hoped they would be happy.
To her, it sounded like a recipe for certain misery, but then if Carne was hers, she would want him in every way there was-as husband, as lover, as friend. No limitations; or half-measures.
And that, she thought staring into the misty street, was how she did want him and always would, long after this strange summer was over.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE Listers were as good as their word. Rowan had no problems getting to see Sybilla, who was clearly making excellent progress. She and her room-mate Mrs Patterson had become firm friends, and it was obvious the relationship would continue when they had left Heatonbank, although Mrs Patterson expected to spend a few weeks of convalescence with a married daughter in Bournemouth before returning to her own home in Keswick.
Rowan saw little of Antonia. She seemed to be out most of the time, and the house was· beginning to take on a neglected quality. It wasn't being used sufficiently to be really dirty, but it looked uncared for, and Rowan grieved silently when she returned there in the evenings. She kept rigorously to her own side of the bargain, looking after her own room, and, on the Monday which was the pottery's usual closing day, shopping and. cooking for the freezer. David had taken her into Keswick, so that she could also go to the bank, and as they were driving out of the town Rowan thought for a moment that she saw Antonia going into one of the tall grey villas on the hill, but it was only a glimpse, and there had to be other tall redheaded women about. But when she arrived back at Raven's Crag and found the house deserted yet again, it made her wonder for a while, but she shrugged her curiosity away. If Antonia had made some friends, that was all to the good. Perhaps she would be content to stay in the area after all when Carne and she were married.
She kept reminding herself, almost grimly, at regular intervals that they were going to be married, and it was rather like pressing on an aching tooth, but one day the pain would stop. It would have to. She couldn't spend the rest of her life looking back t
o a house perched on a rainswept fellside.
Antonia never asked how Rowan was managing with her visits to Sybilla. Nor had the subject of Sybilla's eventual return to the house been raised again, except by Doctor Mortimer, who told Rowan that with ordinary care the older woman should be able to take up her former life again.
'In fact I'd like to see anyone try to stop her,' he remarked rather obliquely, and Rowan glanced at him quickly, wondering whether he had sensed any of the undercurrents between Sybilla and Antonia.
She smiled. 'That's wonderful. Her flat's all ready and waiting for her. I only have to make up the bed.
She didn't mention the conversation to Antonia when she saw her next. It would be better, she thought, to wait until Carne's return before broaching the subject.
As the date of the disco approached, she found she was looking forward to it more than she had dreamed possible. She had started to become accustomed to working all day and spending her evenings at the house, and a little gaiety would do her no harm at all. She even bought herself a new dress, urged on by Grace, a floating Indian cotton in shades of green and gold with heavy embroidery around the slashed neck and long full sleeves. She had had her hair trimmed too so that it swung softly towards her face, and she had some ear-rings which she had bought in London long before, Indian earrings with three tiers of tiny gold sequins.
She felt more cheerful than she had done for some time as she walked down to the pottery on the morning of the disco. As she went towards the village shop she noticed some youths outside tinkering with motorbikes, but there was nothing new in that. They had been there before many times as she went to and fro, and the tallest one with the studs in his black leather coat and an ear-ring in one ear was Jeff Wainwright, the erstwhile gardener at Raven's Crag.
Usually they took no notice of her, but this morning was different. As she approached, Jeff Wainwright straightened up slowly and stood, blocking the footpath. Rowan made to step off the kerb and walk round him, disliking the long insolent look he gave her, but he moved too, and she paused, a little nonplussed and more than a little wary, although she told herself that she could come to little harm in broad daylight within a few feet of the shop where his mother and sister were both working. Not, she thought wryly as she met his gaze with a defiant lift of her chin, that she could count on much help from that quarter. Mrs Wainwright, and particularly her daughter, had given her the most perfunctory service whenever she had been in the shop, and Beth's attitude bordered on the surly. She never returned any of Rowan's tentative smiles, or replied to any of her questions or comments with more than a monosyllable.
Now Jeff Wainwright said, 'I want a word with you.' 'If it's about your job at the house, then you'll have to see Mr Maitland when he gets back,' she said quickly.
One of his companions laughed, and Jeff gave a sneering smile. 'I don't want any lousy job with 'im. No, it's you I want to talk to. Hear you're going to the C1isco tonight with 'im.' He jerked a thumb in the direction of the pottery.
Rowan said coolly, 'News gets around.'
'Well, that's village life, isn't it?' he said. 'Folks have nowt to talk about except each other. But you wouldn't know about that, coming from London.'
Rowan said politely, 'What I do know is that you're making me late for work. May I get past, please?'
'Presently. There's no hurry.' He looked her up and down and she forced herself to stay impassive under a glance which stripped the clothes from her. 'How do you fancy going with me instead?'
'With you?' Rowan echoed stupidly, then she rallied. 'Frankly, I don't.'
'The thing is,' he said, still watching her, 'Dave used to go with my sister, and she's still keen on him. They might have got back together if you hadn't shown up. Now, if you were to tell him you were going with me tonight, then he'd ask Beth, and everyone would be happy.'
Rowan said coldly, 'I'm afraid I wouldn't. I don't know you, and I certainly don't want to go out with you either to a disco or anywhere else. And if David had wanted to date your sister, he would have done so. You really can't interfere in people's lives. Haven't you discovered that yet?'
One of the others imitated what she had said in a high falsetto voice, and someone else sniggered. Rowan felt herself flush. The situation was making her increasingly uneasy, yet pride forbade that she should run from it ignominiously.
Jeff said, 'Not good enough for you, am I? But I'd give you a better time than Dave, for all his classy accent.' He grinned insolently. 'Better than that hard-faced bastard up on the fell too.'
The colour in Rowan's face deepened. It was impossible that there could have been any gossip linking her name with Carne's, she knew that. It was just a spiteful barb from a young man with a grudge that had found a target.
She shrugged in an effort to be casual. 'It's a village disco, not a life partnership. I don't have exclusive rights in David. He can dance with your sister if that's what he wants. Now will· you move, please? I have to go to work.'
If he detained her again, then she was going to be frightened. She might even be forced to retreat into the shop and suffer the humiliation of asking for their help, but she would do it if she had to, and perhaps Jeff Wainwright sensed something of her determination, because he stood to one side and Rowan went past him, her head high. She could hear the sounds of amusement from the others, some muttered remarks, probably ribald, and breathed deeply in relief. It had been an unpleasant little incident, but it was behind her now. All the same, she wished in a way she had refused David's invitation. Not that she thought for one minute he would have invited Beth Wainwright instead, but at least she would not have been involved in any little dramas. That was the last thing she needed, she thought ruefully, shivering a little as she remembered the final look Jeff Wainwright had given her, half sensual, half antagonistic. That was something she couldn't understand. She was the last person on earth, the last type to appeal, to someone like him. There was nothing about him-his looks or his personality-which appealed to her, and she was quite sure that he felt the same about her. Perhaps asking her out had been a quixotic gesture to help his sister achieve her heart's desire, but somehow she didn't think so. He didn't look the type for quixotic gestures of any kind.
She wondered whether she should mention what had happened to Clive, but decided against it. The imminence of David's exams was already causing a certain amount of tension, she had guessed, and Clive might suddenly come the heavy father and forbid David to go to the disco at all. And he needs to go, she thought. He's been working very hard, and he really needs a break and some relaxation.
But Jeff Wainwright's intervention had taken the edge off her own anticipation. And as she put on her overall and went into the showroom, she found herself hoping that that was the end of the matter.
There was a steady stream of customers that day, and as it turned out she saw little of either Clive or Grace, and certainly had no opportunity of a private word with them. David did not put in an appearance either and she guessed this was one of the days he had classes to attend, instead of studying at home.
When the pottery closed for the evening, she was in no great hurry to leave, moving round the showroom, doing some desultory tidying. She needed to go back to the house, of course, to have something to eat, to bath and change, but she was afraid she would find Jeff Wainwright waiting again, although she told herself she was being ridiculous. It was hardly likely that he would still be hanging about, and anyway, she would have to face him at the disco later.
She walked up the street towards the shop, and as she did so Beth Wainwright came out and began putting some apples in a bag from the small fruit and vegetable display on the pavement. Rowan gave her a tentative smile, but the look she received in response was cold and inimical. Beth was quite a pretty girl, but hostility made her look plain, and Rowan wished she could tell her that even if she had been willing to break her date with David, it was unlikely in the extreme that he would resume his relationship wit
h Beth. He might joke about school and his exams and hopes of a university place, but Rowan had little doubt where his sights were set, and Beth would only be laying herself open to more heartache if she imagined his plans for the future would ever include her.
She thought with a trace of irritation, 'Oh, why does everything have to be so difficult?'
It had been a warm sunlit day, and it was going to be a beautiful evening, she realised as she turned in through the gates and walked up the drive at Raven's Crag. The sky was the clear unsullied blue of early summer, and only the merest wisps of clouds drifted along the tops of the fells. The thought of shutting herself away from it all into a hot, heavy, smoky atmosphere shrill with noise was not particularly appealing.
Rowan turned the corner which led to the house and stopped abruptly, her eyes fixed in disbelief on the car that stood there. Carne's car. So he was back again, without a word to anyone. Even Sybilla had not known when Rowan visited her the previous evening when he intended to return. A prickle of apprehension touched her nerve endings as she stood staring at the car. There was no sign of Antonia's vehicle, she realised uneasily, and Antonia should be here to welcome Carne home to a clean house and a decent meal, because that was the least of the strange bargain they had made. Or was Antonia so sure of him now that she no longer needed to bother to keep his terms?
Forcing herself to reluctant movement, she mounted the steps and opened the front door. Inside the hall she paused for a moment, looking about her, biting the soft flesh of her inner lip, seeing the house as Carne must see it, stale, unlived-in, uncared-for, its former brightness dimmed and tarnished by neglect. Everywhere, it showed.
She listened intently for a moment for some sign, some sound of his presence, but everything was hushed and silent. If she hadn't seen the car, she would have thought the place was still unoccupied.
She went through to the kitchen. At least she could restore some order there--do the inevitable washing up which Antonia would have left for her. She pushed open the door and went in.